Presently follow a few pages of perhaps the divinest music to be found in Wagner's scores, Tristan's dream of Isolda crossing the summer sea. To an evenly pulsing gentle accompaniment we hear first the second part of a love-theme (_q_), then fragments of others, till the point of supernal, Mozartean beauty is touched at "full of grace and loving mildness." The pathos of it is almost intolerable: no one could stand the strain another second, when after the cry, "Ah, Isolda, how fair art thou," he rouses himself to anger because Kurvenal cannot see on the rolling waters what he with his inner vision sees so bright and clear. How any one could, even at a first hearing, fail to realize that the composer of this sublime passage was by far, infinitely far, the mightiest and tenderest composer of opera music who has lived--this is a phenomenon that passes our comprehension nowadays. The scene where the shepherd sounds his pipe to signal the coming of the boat, and Tristan, his delight wrought up until it grows into anguish, goes mad and tears off his bandages, baffles description. It is made up of the love music of the first and second acts, the melodies being metamorphosed in marvellous fashion. At the last he sees Isolda throwing down the torch as she did in Act II, and as darkness comes over his eyes we hear the same music combined with the love-themes. There is only one thing of the kind to match Isolda's lament--Donna Anna's grief over her father's body in _Don Giovanni_. The rest of the act is largely made up of music which has been heard before. The death-song is an extended and glorified version of the hymn to night; and the close is of sad, tragic sweetness. The lovers are joined together and at peace--but in the everlasting darkness of the grave.